Prime Minister Modi says Sanitation Service Coverage nearly Doubled

Claiming a victory for his Swach Bharat Mission, Prime Minister of India, Narendra Modi went about adding to this achievement with mention of how access to sanitation has jumped under his time as PM, from less than 40% to currently 80%. He added that cleanliness was essential for a healthy life, and that such facilities manage to be the difference between success and failure in the development of a nation. He added that 350,000 villages in India had declared themselves to be Open Defecation Free, another feather in his cap, to be sure.

With positive moves being made in certain areas of life in rural India, there is every reason for the Prime Minister to laud these achievements. Among other things, with elections looming on the horizon, this seems to be the ideal juncture at which the listing of such achievements should take place. Even more so, the verifiable success of programs like the “Pradhan Mantri Bhartiya Janaushadhi Pariyojana” that has successfully brought down the costs of most generic medicines to make it affordable to the average Indian, work together with sanitation programs to ensure the good health of people. In fact, the Prime Minister pointed out this very fact, indicating that the success of reducing open defecation, and therefore the potential incidence of spread of disease from this practice, was money better spent when compared to the alternative cost of having to fund the recovery of the health of those who would otherwise have been negatively impacted and would have had to resort to purchasing medication, or having to pay for treatment that would be a bigger financial drain on them.